Marie Gilmore, Osprey Observer: 750 Papers, a Golf Cart and 25 Years of FishHawk News | Ep. 1

Machine transcript, lightly edited for local names. Timestamps match the full episode.

00:12 Welcome, first guest

And we’re live on the East of Tampa podcast with my first guest, Miss Marie Gilmore. How are you today, ma’am? Hooray, I’m so honored to be your very first ever guest. So we’re gonna have to set the bar really high. You’re gonna crush. I’m excited. All right, let’s jump into it.

00:33 2002: 750 papers by golf cart

In 2002, you hand delivered 750 papers in FishHawk. Take me through the genesis of how that came to be. Absolutely. It goes way back almost 25 years and January will be 25 years ago. And I was just an infant little mid-20-year-old with My first child was born and I moved to FishHawk for the paths, the parks, the clubhouses, the playgrounds. It was at the time the nirvana of community, the Mecca of master plan development that had all the things, the park square, the elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, everything I grew up with.

That I wanted for my family. So when we moved here, there was a few fledgling publications. There was a kind of a junior version of a Talon that I was actually working for the developer and put together for them. And the Tribune came in and purchased it. So one day I was doing the community newsletter, and the next day the Tribune bought it. And so my husband and I were trying to figure out What the next step for us was with this little infant at home. And he said, you know what? Just obviously, this is a hotbed of news, of growth, of development. Just start the newspaper and run it the way you want to run it, cover the news you want to cover, and kick it off. And so I actually worked very closely with the staff at the HOA because we were very friendly. And they let me borrow the golf cart that belonged to the community and hand-deliver a photocopied version of the very first edition, which was the Osprey Observer, and I took it. to the 750 homes between phase one, phase two of FishHawk. Vivas was a brand new elementary school. The community ended right after Heron Glen. There was no more. Development Park Square was a dream. So we were new residents and we were very excited, and there was lots of businesses who wanted to get out to FishHawk. It was sort of the hotbed of growth, of development. There was a brand new boulevard. FishHawk Boulevard was brand new, open.

And from the very first month, all we had to say is we’re going to every mailbox in FishHawk, and people would say, Yep, I want that business. I’ll put an ad. Lawn care, service industries, personal trainers, people wanted the business of the new residents at FishHawk. It was all families, it was growing very quickly, and everybody wanted to get out to FishHawk.

Love it.

03:03 Editor, ad rep, designer: building the paper

from the start, did you see yourself as a community organizer, as a promoter, as a journalist, as a businesswoman? Ha you know, and I I would imagine that kind of carries over to today. How do you see yourself first? So I usually introduce myself in the community as the managing editor of the Osprey Observer because that sort of encompasses what I do. I oversee all the stories that we sign for the paper. I do the last look on the layout before it goes to press. I’m sort of responsible for the entire thing for five editions and almost 200 stories per month, but

It takes a whole team. So when I very first started the paper, it was just me. I was the s I was the ad rep, I was the designer, I was the person answering the phones, doing the billing, and very quickly I knew I couldn’t do it all. But I loved getting involved. And I knew that the way to get involved in your community was to join a chamber. So I can remember walking into the Brandon Chamber with my 25-year-old in an infant carrier, walking in and saying, Hey, I really want to join the chamber. And they really Thought I was crazy because I was just young and bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and they said, Really? You want to join the chamber? Shouldn’t you get them a little bit more established? I no, no, no. I know this is where the information is, the new businesses, people doing good things. I know I need to be involved in the chamber. So one of the very first things I did was join the chamber. So at the very beginning, I knew I needed to get connected, needed to get to know the movers and shakers of the community. I was so shy when they first handed me a microphone. I was shaking. I used to have written out my little elevator speech. Now I’m like, does anyone have microphone? No one can hear me if I’m just yelling out loud. I now seek out the microphone, but at the time I was really scared. So there was a few great businesses who mentored me and kind of walked me through the path, took me by the hand and showed me how to do things. And now really I’m in All the local chambers, all the local organizations. I want to be in the know of everything going on. It’s really fun to know things first thing, kind of have a little secret to tell, but then I prove them as well. So there’s always a rumor that Target’s coming, right? Target’s always coming to Bloomingdale or Lithia Pinecrest, but I say, let me make a phone call. And most of the time we find out it’s not quite Target. It might be Whole Foods or Walmart. But we have to get to the nitty-gritty of it. So very at the very beginning I always knew I loved the behind the scenes. I had gone to college for journalism, so it was the assigning the stories and getting in the know that I really loved. And my very first hire was an ad rep. Because that’s what makes the paper a free distribution paper, was the advertising with him. And I was able to surround myself with some really community-minded people who could take the other roles on. So me, I just want to be the editor. I want to assign the stories, lay it out, get the paper in the mailbox.

Wonderful.

05:56 What FishHawk and 301 looked like in 2002

ah take me back to 2002. What did East of Tampa look like? What did 301 look like? What did Brandon Boulevard look like? What did FishHawk look like? What would surprise people? I’m still fairly new to the community being here 25 years. If you talk to anyone who went to Brandon High School or even Bloomingdale High School, because you’ll know this from the great research you do, but even Bloomingdale High School was on double sessions for a certain amount of time. And so really when I moved out to FishHawk, FishHawk Boulevard was brand spanking new. It had just opened.

I remember driving the seven miles at Boyette Road and when we saw the seven eleven on the corner of Bell Shoals and FishHawk Boulevard, it was the only thing Business-wise, we had seen in seven miles. There was no other businesses, no Publix, no Culver’s, no plazas. And we were like, good, there’s something. There’s actually civilization out here. Because we were driving seven miles from the interstate with nothing to pass. So when we came out here, there was no Newsome High School, there was no Randall Middle School, there was no sports complex. It was just blank property. And we knew we were coming out. oh Sort of into a suburb that was going to become the kind of a place we wanted to raise a family. So it’s definitely grown into that. Now we try not to leave because everything is here. You know, we get here in the afternoon and we try not to go within a two-mile radius of our community because we’ve got restaurants and dentists and doctors and everything we could ever imagine has now come to us, so we don’t have to go commute to them anymore. But that Momentum of growth has happened to all of Southeast Hillsborough. It is not just Lithia that has grown. Obviously, right now we’re feeling that huge growth on the 301 corridor for Riverview, Big Bend area. Brandon has exploded.

Valrico has grown. We have seen it through all of our communities. Apollo Beach was just a speck on the map 25 years ago and now it’s really the destination. So the growth may have shifted as this area has kind of grown out, but the community has definitely grown and gotten more services than we had 25 years ago, so we can stay in our own hometown.

Very good.

08:25 Surviving the recession and the pandemic

lots of times people think business is gonna be very linear, right? Like every year is gonna be good and you’re just gonna move up and to the right. I’m sure you’ve had some tough times. What were some of those tough times and what kind of kept kept you moving forward? Well definitely we have seen that. It it’s been twenty five years and I would love to say it was super easy. I will say the first few years was just growth because we expanded from one edition to four. Then about fifteen years ago we purchased a Christian newspaper, which actually became a sacrifice of the pandemic because it was not a delivered through the mailbox edition. It was actually distributed through four hundred churches locally and we Printed 10,000 copies, and unfortunately, with churches not meeting for so long, it was difficult to get that momentum back. So we absorbed that into the Osprey Observer, but now we published the five editions, and I will say we’ve had two seasons of true hardship. The first one was the recession 2007 to 2009, the big short when 20% of all homes in the United States were foreclosed upon or people were upside down on. We definitely felt that intimately through. Our community. I mean, that meant 20% of the homes in Southeast Hillsborough were foreclosed upon or upside down, short sale. That affected the businesses just the same because a lot of our homeowners are small business owners as well. So if they no longer have a home or they’ve had to move out of the area, that means their business went with them. So we felt a big adjustment during that time, a big drawback of a lot of corporate dollars, a lot of development, a lot of unknowns. So the recession. We definitely got through. And then the pandemic. I mean, from one week to the next, the world shut down. You know, we had had some whispers of things coming, of a virus coming, and all of a sudden we were shut down. Fortunately for us, as a newspaper, we were considered an essential business because we distributed information. So we were always able to operate. We didn’t miss a single edition. And we very quickly, as a locally owned small business, were able to pivot and work directly with our Advertisers and asked them what they needed from us during that time. So a lot of our dentists, doctors, restaurants that couldn’t physically operate.

We asked them what message they wanted to get out to the community or if they wanted to hold their advertising until they did know more. We also created an editor whose specific job was to cover how the community was accommodating protocols for safety. A great example I always mention is Bullfrog Creek Brewing because I’m not a real big beer drinker, but they started brewing root beer and cream soda and you could order it and pick up as you went. you know, touchless pickup. some of the art studios would make make and take art projects that you could pick up for the kids to do at home. So businesses who got really creative, we also got creative with them. And we were able to maintain publishing our newspapers through that whole process. And because we’re locally owned and could pivot and change and adjust, we’re not as rigid as large corporations. We were able to stay ahead of the game in each of those times.

Ver very good.

11:49 How a local business gets in the paper

You are definitely a champion for local small businesses. How does a local business get into the Osprey Observer? So easily. I tell I tell this story all the time. It’s so simple. You can run an ad in any edition for $50. It’s sort of like a service directory in like a classified section. $50. That’s what it takes to get into $15,000 mailboxes. You can run an eighth of a page black and white ad for a hundred dollars. That’s our shop local special. So when you look at that per household, $15,000 mailboxes, $100, you’re talking about less than seven cents a household. So we can help a small business get their name out. Consistently market and brand themselves in the community, and it’s not just a print ad in the newspaper, it’s not just getting in the mailbox. We also are trying to partner with our small businesses. We have advertisers who’ve been with us for 24 of our 25 years. We have a couple that have been with us for 25 years. They’ve stuck with us and grown their business alongside us because we also provide for them a story once a year of their campaign, no matter what the size of their campaign is. We get report. To do a story on their business and tell their story in another way. It’s their why behind their business. People see them every month, they see a phone number and an address. Okay, great. They do pressure washing. But then we talk about the family behind it that is third generation pressure washers and they specialize in soft wash of driveways, and all of a sudden people are like, I want to do business with them. I’ve lived at Valrico for 20 years, or I went to that high school. So it’s that familiarity of realizing, I’m working with a small business, and those dollars are going right back into my community. Which in turn come right back to my business. And we believe in the givers gain sort of concept. So we try to make sure that we personally are using our small businesses, you know, put our money where our mouth is, and make sure we’re shopping local and we’re dining local and we’re using our businesses in the newspaper. I try to tell people: I don’t expect you to use every single business in the paper, but at least get a quote. At least give them the opportunity to try. tried to earn your business, if there’s a reason that you choose to go with another company, that’s your prerogative. But at least let them give you a quote. Just so that you can, you know, say you’re shopping local. That’s what’s gonna keep our community strong through the rest of the decade.

Absolutely.

14:15 The local stories she’s proudest of

What are some of the stories that you’re most proud of that maybe surprise you the most? What are some of those? There we’ve had so many fun stories over the years. We’ve had Jeremy Rosado from Valrico was number seven on The Voice. That was so exciting to watch him on national television. We’ve got Brian and Mika Kleinschmidt in Riverview who have a show on HGTV, 100 Day Dream Home, and they’ve been on a lot of like rock the blocks and competition shows with other reality stars. Brian himself has also been on The Amazing Race and Shark Tank. So we follow along with our local residents who are on national TV. That’s so fun. We had a kid who started out playing Little League at the FishHawk Sports Complex who signed a $1.3 million New York Yankee contract and he got to play the Tampa Tarpons, which is the farm team right here in Tampa Bay. So that was so exciting. We’d love to follow along those success stories and celebrate those successes. But we’re also happy to cover the kid whose chicken wins the you know FFA 4H chicken of the year at the county fair and the strawberry festival. We We are the hometown paper that’s gonna cover the stories that other people aren’t gonna cover.

when we started out there was about five local competition newspapers, the Tampa Tribune, the St. P. Times both had regional newspapers out here with regional offices. And over the years the Trib disappeared, the Times, you know, is still around, but not covering as much of the local community as we are. So we’re proud of those stories because no one else is gonna flesh them out. We had a student Valrico just win a $50,000 scholarship for her invention. Those are the kinds of things we love to celebrate and let people know and inspire other kids. We know that the parents are the ones reading the paper, so they may tell their kids about them. But we’re hoping to keep the value and the reputation of the local hometown paper alive for all generations.

16:23 Why the competition disappeared

So there used to be, you know, multiple competitors or other options in the area. are are you just like the super competitive businesswoman that crushed them all? Or what what has led to your success when some of these others didn’t make it or they’re not doing it anymore? So consistency and the locally owned. So some of them were l large corporations that couldn’t pivot quickly enough. you know, the writing was on the wall, the reporters would tell me, we’re talking about you in our editorial meetings. You know, the big guys, the publishers are worried about you. And I’m like, little me, I’m a monthly. I’m in the mailbox. I got nothing on you. You’re you know, you’re the big guys. And we’ve always welcomed those newspapers, and I’ll tell you, we’ve got a serious lack. Of trained, skilled news reporters now because we used to count on the big guys, the Trib the Times, the Dailies, to have skilled, trained journalists to cover County Commission, to cover the court system, to cover you know City Hall. Now there’s not no one. There’s the budgets have been slashed, and we’ve got a few really good reporters. Brian Bohor with Bohor’s Corner is one that we’ve aligned with because he knows how to get into the nitty-gritty and delve in. Into the county archives and get the scoop on what’s coming, what’s developing, what’s building. We don’t have the capacity of funding a reporter to just cover that beat for us. So it’s really important that we’re missing out on those advocates to keep the community informed so that we’re not surprised when you know a

something starts digging under the street outside of our house because we didn’t know it was coming. So we try to be there, but we also have an aspect that we cover good news. We’re not chasing ambulances, we’re not putting DUIs up in the paper, we’re not putting criminal in there. Part of that has to do with the fact that we started a trend that we cover good news and then as a monthly hometown newspaper

We’re getting to you once a month. So by the time we would get into the mailbox, we need to be having news stories that can kind of withstand a little shelf life. So we don’t put things like wanted this guy, because by the time the next edition comes out, hopefully he’s already arrested and in jail. So we try to steer towards the good news as much as possible.

Very good.

18:49 The future of local news and high school sports

What are maybe some predictions you have about local news in the future? I think I’m a I’m a super big high school sports fan, right? And you guys did a a wonderful preview edition for local high school football. but it’s not covered overall like you know it used to be when I was a kid. I can’t I can’t believe it, right? So one of you know, I don’t know if it’s a prediction, but one of my hopes is that there’s, you know, some some capacity for people to cover high school sports more. What are some of those predictions that you might have.

Yes. And for us, we’re a different animal. We always have been. We’re not subscription based, so we’re not dependent on the subscriptions that our people have for our newspaper, and we’re delivered through the US Postal Service into the mailbox. So very consistent method of delivery each and every single month. So because we’re direct mailed and because we don’t count on subscriptions, we go to a certain demographic of homeowner, a single family homeowner in a master plan development with an average household income. And if they qualify within those parameters, we go to their right. So, because of that consistency, we know we’re getting in those mailboxes every month. People call all the time to subscribe, and we’re like, you have to live within one of the routes that designates, or you can pick up a newspaper, of course, at the library, the Y at our office, but we also put every single story online through a flippable edition, and then we embed every story into a website. And then we’ve got all our socials, and we’ve done podcasting, and we’ve done videos, and we’ve done short forms. We’re trying to be everywhere that. The eyeballs are, and for us, we think there’s going to be a renaissance of value put back towards the hometown paper because everything else is if it’s non-vetted and just posted for clicks, it’s clickbait or it’s gossip. So to be able to vet it that it’s true, people are needing to get it from a source that they believe that they have know they can trust, and so those trusted sources are going to be their hometown newspapers, their hometown. So we’ve got to figure out as a business entity, how to maintain our value in the community and make sure that people are reading it, whether it’s online, whether it’s in their inbox.

if they’re having a cup of coffee, reading it cover to cover, and getting to know the businesses and the things in the community. And then we need just the skilled reporters who want to cover those high school games. The the varsity football is great, but we’d love to cover all the sports. It’s just the having the reporters to do so. A lot of the high schools are no longer publishing their high school papers like they were. We used to get a lot of interns coming out of the high school papers and some of those have even disappeared, which is a shame. They’re now working on yearbook, but that’s a once-a-year publication. So we really we would love to get back to those high school sports and you know that’s a huge dedication. We like marching band too. Any kids that are practicing three or four nights a week, they deserve some coverage in the paper.

Absolutely.

21:49 What’s coming: hospitals, urgent ERs, Lithia Pinecrest Road

when I talk to you informally, you always seem to have intel about the area that no one else knows. So do you have any potential breaking news, any secrets, anything’s coming that you’d care to share? Oh my goodness, you’re putting me on the spot here. I try to say I know a whole lot about I know a whole little about a whole lot of things. So just by being in this community for 25 years, raising my family here, watching the businesses come and go, then I just happen to know quite a bit about a whole bunch of things. but I don’t claim to be an expert at any of them. And also just the fact that I’ve had kids go through Hillsborough County schools all the way through knowing how to get bright futures. There are six ways to graduate through high school in this c community and three of them would give you a free AA degree, you know, there’s just a lot of detail and I’ve always been a curious person. So when I hear something and I say, okay, tell me everything about that. And before I can write about it, I need the who, what, where, when, why, how. Much and how do I get more info? I love sharing information with people who get excited about things, but as far as what’s new and what’s coming, there’s just it’s an overwhelming amount of things and businesses coming. When we moved to FishHawk 25 years ago, there was one hospital in town.

One. There was no urgent ERs, there was no, you know, 24-hour urgent cares. So the population growth has definitely changed our Access to medical care, to health care, to services in the community, and that’s been a big part of the growth. Is we now have three local hospitals with ERs. We now have urgent ERs. You know, we’re gonna have an urgent ER right up the boulevard that’s gonna change the access to medical care by thirty minutes each direction, which is is impactful for the community. Traffic traffic is terrible. I do not try to leave

you know, to get to seventy five it’ll take you thirty minutes, no matter which way you go, at seven thirty in the morning. So I don’t know what the fix is because we’ve been talking about widening Lithia Pinecrest for twenty five years. And it’s the kind of a story that It was funded, it was not funded, it might be funded again. We’ll do one more PD and E study and maybe fund it in twenty more years. So I’m losing faith that I will ever see Lithia Pinecrest widened in my lifetime, but I’m always hopeful and I always think there’s a path to work with the county, the state, whoever we need to, that Communication is key and I want our community to be stronger. I want it to be better for our kids so that they want to come back here and we can stay here and retire. So that’s a lot that that was great.

24:47 How to submit your story

let’s let let’s let’s call that our our first episode at East of Tampa. Where can people find you? who should find you? Who should reach out to you? Do you have any any requests from people? Please you know, the floor is yours, Miss. Sure, sure. So what I will say is there’s good news in our community and we cannot be everywhere all the time. We’ve got reporters, we’ve got freelancers, we’ve got editors, we’ve got staff out in the community, but we can’t be everywhere all the time. We need help from the community to kind of be our eyes and ears. And we never say no to someone submitting a press release, a news story, or a column for our paper. It’s super simple, ospreyobserver.com, and on the left hand side it says submissions. There’s a drop-down form that prompts you with everything we need to put a story about your organization, your charity, your church, your kids’ sports team, your business in the newspaper, and we’re more than happy to write up anyone for free. There is no way to pay for a story in the Osprey Observer. You pay for an ad in the paper which supports us so we can put news stories in the paper, but it is not

You do not have to pay to get in there. So we’re happy to cover any organization, charity, team for free. It’s how we can support our community and keep people reading the newspaper. ospreyobserver.com is our website. If you get the paper, we just ask that you read it cover to cover. Have a look at the businesses, have a cup of coffee, and make sure you’re supporting those businesses within, which in turn supports what we can do for the community. So keep reading, shop local, dine. local, get involved, go like, love, and share on the East of Tampa page and stay in the know. The stronger we are and the more knowledgeable we are as a community, the better we can make it.

Thanks Marie. Perfect first episode. That’s East of Tampa episode one. That’s it.